Late Afternoon Pre-Shabbat Hike

Leora and I met in the 1986 tour guide course. Then she married a redheaded dentist/rabbi and had 10 red-headed kids and 1 blond. We know trails within a 10 mile circumference of Jerusalem, except for this one.  This relatively isolated trail beckoned on the trail map, but seemed dangerous, being a bit toward Arab villages. And yet, it appeared as a family hike in this Friday's Jerusalem Post. So, I strapped on the gun and went to Leora's, where we all scurried to cook and clean for Shabbat, and then piled into the van at 2:30 PM.  (Shabbat candle-lighting was at 6:32 PM -- At one point in the video, you can hear 4-year-old Davidie worrying, "I don't want to drive on Shabbat".)  Turning off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, we drove behind the hill of the Arab town of Abu Ghosh, onto a road that Leora vaguely remembered being on once, and that I had never been----with only forests and fields in sight.  


Our first steps on the trail revealed "pristine nature" (a nearly obsolete phrase anywhere near Jerusalem).  The hill we hiked down faced north, and hence was green, whereas the opposite southern-exposed hill was stark.  No phony pine forest was planted here.  Only the natural "Mediterranean scrub-land".  The lower down we hiked, the more green groves of cypress, oak, pistachio, and carob trees there were, casting their mysterious inviting shadows.

As hike-loving tour guides, we were astonished to see these ---till now unknown -- untouched surroundings just beyond Jerusalem's doorstep.  This was the one radius of Jerusalem's circumference that we had not explored. 


No jeep road yet mars this valley, nor a JNF lookout pavilion aggressively carved into the hills, nor a snack bar, a zip-line, nor a goat-cheese farm. Miraculously, this little corner of paradise has somehow been left alone till now.  Just Hashem's artwork and a few ancient crumbled ruins.


If you see a big black bush near the end of the video -- it's my hair.  

Fine Felines For Free 

Here are 2 felines that need to find good homes.  The black one is already

neutered and vaccinated.  Interested people should call me in Jerusalem at:

050 761 2109        I will bring them to anywhere in the country.

A Surprising Kitten Adoption

 2 weeks ago I found a kitten crying in the Christian Quarter.  I had him for 2 weeks, and named him "Cubby".

One late afternoon last week, I was walking to the Jewish Quarter parking lot to do the daily feeding of about 12 cats there, with a 2 week old kitten folded in my sweatshirt. This is what he looks like (click on the video):

 The thought crossed my mind how no one would ever know I was carrying a tiny animal on me.  Just then, a passing Armenian lady stopped and asked if I was holding a baby animal.   I showed her, and she lit up, saying she wanted to ask her kids if they wanted it.  I asked if she ever had a cat before, and she said she had a cat for 18 years.  I said that this kitten was too young right now, but that I had a bigger kitten at home.  Would she like to see it?  "OK".  So I ran around the corner and got Cubby, and took him to the doorway of their old Armenian house.  They (the lady, her adopted niece, and the niece's 2 little girls-----Emily and Tatiana) took him eagerly.  I asked, "Do you have any food for him now?" 
 "No".
  I ran back to my place, and brought canned food, dry food, and clumping sand.  They invited me into their enviably tidy, clean home, and took me to the back room, where the bedridden grandmother was cuddling Cubby on the blanket.  I said, "I have to go get a camera -----This is going on my blog."  So I ran home a third time for the camera.

Upon returning, I was informed that his name would be :"Musky"  I said, "Oh, that's a fine name.  Why 'Musky'"? 

 "It's a kind of dog from Alaska." 

 "Oh, that's 'Husky'". 

 "Oh, yes, that's right".

"But 'Musky' is nice, too.  It's a nice smell."
A nice neighbor then appeared, announcing that she would like to adopt the tiny kitten at the end of April, when he's old enough.


They showed me a photo of an elegant man holding a cigarette-----the late husband of the now invalid grandmother.  They met when he came for a visit from Egypt for a cousin's wedding.  Like many men, he barged into a room without knocking, and there was his other cousin----now the grandmother----in the middle of getting dressed for the wedding.  She complained to her family about this jerk who burst in on her without knocking.  Meanwhile, he was telling his family that he will never marry anyone but her.


We all agreed that he looked like Clark Gable.


Here is Cubby (Husky) in his adoption ad, followed by him snuggling with his adoptive family:

Then the lady invited me into her living-room, saying that the couch and many upholstered chairs along the 4 walls were 80 and 100 years old, and started regaling me with stories about how previous generations of her family were connected to famous people in Israeli history.  For example, her father had gone to the same school as one of the Prime Ministers, Yitzchak Navon.  When Jerusalem was reunited after 19 years in 1967, Yitzchak Navon quickly came to Jaffe Gate and asked around to find his old boyhood friend from the Armenian Quarter.  Her grandmother knew 7 languages (including English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Arabic), and so was the translator for Glubb Pasha when he was here before the 1948 War of Independence.

Greeting the Swifts, March 12, 2012
The 4th Annual Commemoration of Their Return
Written by Tova Saul

Jeremiah 8:7  "Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the crane observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord."

   

      This evening (March 12, 2012) no less than the mayor of Jerusalem greeted nearly 90 pairs of a small species of bird who have just finished their yearly journey from South Africa to return to their nesting crevices in the Western Wall.  Here, from mid-February till June, at twilight, small black winged silhouettes speedily and gracefully wheel and swoop overhead with high pitched cries.

     The life cycle of a swift, which lives to be about 10 years old, can exhaust you, just thinking about it. The fledglings “work out” in the nest, doing push ups with their wings.  They need to strengthen their muscles, because after 42 days, they fly from the nest, and only stop flying after 3 years, when they build their own first nest.  They eat, drink, sleep, and mate while flying.   (After the ceremony, I asked Dr.Yossi Leshem ------Israel's most famous ornithologist and Director of The International Center for the Study of Bird Migration----how they don’t crash into things while they sleep, and he answered that they fly very high while sleeping.  But now as I write this, I wonder---If they are sleeping, how do they know to stay up so high and not crash into things?  I also wonder why they evolved in such an energy-intensive way, when it seems that other animals have evolved ways to conserve their energy.

   The parent birds feed their young by catching insects throughout the day, storing about 2000 insects in their crops ( pocket in the throat that birds have),  forming a “bolus” (a small package), and feeding it to each chick twice a day.

      A swift cannot stand on its legs, or take off to fly if it's on the ground.  It must be at least a few feet high, clasping a vertical surface, in order to let itself drop and swoop away.  A year ago, a neighbor emailed me an hour before Shabbat, saying a bird was sitting by their front door.  I told them to bring it to me.
It was a swift.  I googled "Yossi Leshem" and----- to my surprise----- he answered the phone, and told me to take it to the Jerusalem zoo.  (The taxi was 100 shekels, for which the family declined to reimburse me.)  Shortly afterward, one of the fantastic staff of the Jerusalem Bird Observatory (Alen) informed me that the bird was probably fine, and simply needed to be held a meter off the ground so it could fly away.

Schoolchildren and adults attending ceremony

First our mayor spoke:

Mayor Nir Barkat

He said that just as the swifts always return to their nests at the Kotel, the Jewish people have always returned to the Kotel, to Jerusalem, and to
the Land of Israel, and that Israel is the nest of the Jewish people..

Mayor Nir Barkat

     And then other VIP's spoke, such as a rabbi of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, Naomi Tzur of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and Yossi Leshem, himself.

   He explained the life cycle of the swift, and mentioned how their numbers are decreasing drastically across their range (40% less in London, for example), due to destruction of old buildings that have nooks and crannies for their nests, and replacing them with modern buildings.  Various cities, such as London and Tel Aviv, are building nesting boxes for them to increase their numbers.  One school project in Tel Aviv has built 30 nesting boxes on their school building.

Dr. Leshem would like to reach more people from a spiritual angle to be interested in birds, and nature in general.  He wants to introduce Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leadership to their own many religious values concerning wildlife conservation.  He mentions that there are also swifts in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and also in many old mosques.  He plans to persuade 20 Israeli mayors to implement bird conservation policies in their cities.

Dr. Leshem also explained to a Russian news team how Israeli farmers and scientists have worked together with their counterparts in Jordan and Arabs in the West Bank to build thousands of nesting boxes for barn owls and kestrels in crop fields to control the rodent populations, eliminating the need to spread tons of poisons.

Yossi Leshem interviewed by Russian news team

Here are my 2 attempts to capture the swifts' flights and cries on video this evening:

Just for fun, I took a look at some of the rabbinical commentaries on Jeremiah 8:7, quoted above.  Some say that the stork, swift, crane, and dove, who don't have the capacity that humans have for advanced thought------even they do the will of God by going where they need to go and doing what they are supposed to do.  Furthermore, birds understand that they need to behave in certain ways to avoid harsh consequences-----being somewhere with scarce food, and to behave in ways that will bring them to better conditions------availability of food in a warmer climate.  Humans, commentators continue, who have the benefit of advanced reasoning, the guidance of Torah, and the hindsight of the deeds of their ancestors, should be able to do a better job than they do at living according to Godly laws and values.

My own 2 cents say the opposite:  Animals are pre-programmed to do what they were created to do.  Humans, created with free will, have a much tougher job figuring it out and an even tougher job sticking to it.

At any rate, the swifts are back for a short while.  May they live long and prosper.

      


Animal Therapy at St. Louis Hospice near Jerusalem's Old City




 This short video is about using animals to cheer people up in a hospice which is a 10 minute walk from where I live.   

         Once a week, I visit Marcie, who is in part of the video (towards the end).  6 years ago, she suddenly had a brain hemorrhage that left her very disabled, although her mind is totally intact.  Once in awhile, I bring her kittens, if I have any.  Once, a tiny kitten         

snuggled and curled up by her neck, covering half of her trach tube.  I asked if it was bothering her breathing, and she shook her head no.  Anyway, I spend at least an hour a week there.  Usually, we watch Modern Family on her laptop.      

            Every Thursday at 1 PM, Marcie hosts the "Happiness Club", during which women friends can show up and read and discuss together passages from Rabbi Pliskin's "Gateway to Happiness" at Marcie's bedside.                          

      


       

Touching Bedrock: Kirk Douglas Reconnects with Judaism... Deep Underground

(This article originally appeared on Aish.com.)

I was sitting on the sofa in my home in Jerusalem, staring into space, when the phone rang. It was my good friend Uriela, calling from Los Angeles. She told me that her boss, Kirk Douglas, wanted to hire me to guide him through the Western Wall Tunnel on his upcoming trip to Jerusalem, where he would be dedicating two playgrounds that he donated.

Her voice had a sly smile as she said, “Here he is,” and handed the phone to – gulp! – one of the greatest movie icons of all time.

I managed to remain coherent for the minute it took to agree to a date and time for the tour.

I spent the next two days slowly reading his autobiography, The Ragman's Son, to find clues for what to highlight, what to toss, and what communication style to use. These gleanings proved helpful before and during the tour:

1. Mr. Douglas gets straight to a colorful point, and moves on to the next. Note: Keep things constantly moving forward.
2. Whenever expressing his most personal feelings, he refers to himself by his Yiddish name, “Issur.”
3. He did not click with John Wayne.
4. He felt distant from and unappreciated by his father. He recalled “staring at a picture in my Hebrew book – Abraham with his long beard bent over a frightened little boy, in his hand a long knife. That boy looked a lot like me.” This image shattered him, driving a wedge between him and Judaism. (For years, the only Jewish ritual he did was to fast on Yom Kippur, even when filming a Western on horseback with his friend Burt Lancaster.)

If Mr. Douglas’ jarring encounter with the near-sacrifice of Isaac was a seminal point of his young life, equally striking was the fact that he would soon be able to touch the bedrock upon which this very story took place. For at the end of the tunnel, the Western Wall’s massive 2,000-year-old hewn blocks of stone suddenly give way to the rising bedrock of Mount Moriah – the site of the binding of Isaac.

I decided to save the high point of the tunnel tour until the end where – at the actual “scene of the crime” – I would re-introduce Kirk Douglas to that Hebrew book picture. But this time it was to be cast in a positive light.

The Tour

Mr. Douglas arrived on a Friday and called me to cancel the tour. “The Jerusalem Foundation is keeping me so busy with a packed schedule.”

I immediately faxed him at the King David Hotel: “Issur has been waiting a very long time for this, and I am one of the few guides who can make the tour meaningful for him. As John Wayne once said: ‘No brag – just fact!’”

Moments before Shabbat began, his driver called to say, “Mr. Douglas will meet you in the King David lobby at 10 o'clock Sunday morning for the tour.”

That morning, Mr. Douglas and I settled into the plush silence of his driver's Mercedes. The pure white exterior, upholstery and carpeting shut out the cacophony of Jerusalem. At first I felt quite anxious, but as soon as Mr. Douglas began talking in his friendly down-to-earth way, I was at ease.

Most of the 500 meter-long Western Wall is hidden, due to the fact that the Muslim Quarter is built right against it. Dozens of these buildings actually include the Wall in their own structures, such as a family’s living room or a Crusader-era market. Therefore, to reveal the Wall’s entire length, the Western Wall Tunnel was carved out underneath the Muslim Quarter. The tunnel exposes awe-inspiring archeology and is an enormously popular touring site.

Before entering the tunnel, there is a large elaborate model of the Temple Mount area. There, I spoke with Mr. Douglas about how this spot is permeated with a sense of Jewish unity. I pointed out the huge stone in the Western Wall; weighing about 570 tons, it is said to be the heaviest object ever lifted by human beings without power machinery. We then moved along to the part of the tunnel that is the closest to the Temple’s Holy of Holies, which I pointed out as a special place of prayer. We continued traversing the long, narrow space, walking on the actual street that existed in Temple times.

We reached the end of the tunnel, and paused in front of the revealed bedrock which is said to be the spot where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac.

I explained that this is the bedrock of the mountain where Abraham took his son Isaac to be sacrificed, and that the story shows that God does not want human sacrifices. Mr. Douglas didn't say a word, but as he touched the bedrock, he was suddenly deep in thought.

In fact, Kirk Douglas was so moved that he later wrote:

The picture from my Hebrew school book flashed into my mind. But, to my surprise, it no longer frightened me. I wasn’t sure why. Something had happened to me here that I didn’t quite understand… This place represented the beginning of my doubts. And, at long last, the end of them…

Tracing our steps back to the beginning of the tunnel, the lights suddenly went out. Everything was pitch black. We felt our way along, eventually reaching the spot of the Holy of Holies where some candles had been lit. Mr. Douglas put his forearm against the Wall and leaned his forehead against it. The instant his lips moved in prayer, the lights came on.

Epilogue

Once outside, Mr. Douglas and I sat across from the Western Wall and spoke about the day in 1967 when Israeli soldiers liberated the Western Wall. I then played for him a recording of the newscast from that momentous day. We heard the triumphant blasts of the shofar by Rabbi Goren, the chief army chaplain; General Motta Gur’s announcement that “the Temple Mount is in our hands”; the young soldiers spontaneously singing “Jerusalem of Gold” and Hatikva.

Amidst the rumbling of jeeps and Jordanian sniper fire, a news reporter says in a quavering voice: “I'm going down at this moment... I'm not a religious man, [but] my hands are touching the stones of the Western Wall!” Rabbi Goren recited the prayer for the dead while soldiers could be heard weeping in the background.

At this point, Mr. Douglas’ tears overran their banks, and he used the hem of his Polo shirt to dry his face. He sat in silence, perhaps perplexed at what caused him to feel this way.

Kirk Douglas returned to Beverly Hills, and before long he told Uriela of his decision to construct a giant-screen theater at the new Aish HaTorah building across from the Western Wall so that everyone could have the emotional experience he had. He wanted to ensure that when people are inspired to ask life’s most important questions, something is there to provide the answers and inspire them with the Jewish vision of tikkun olam and morality.

I’ve been a tour guide for over 20 years, and I’ve been witness to many moments of epiphany. But I’d like to think that my journey with Kirk Douglas into the Western Wall Tunnel was the catalyst for something grander. As Mr. Douglas later wrote of his experience that day:

Here in the dark tunnel, touching the rock of Mount Moriah, I grew up… I had come full circle. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.

Israel for Animal Lovers

By Abigail Klein Leichman

(Reprinted from The New Jersey Jewish Standard)

Tova Saul moved to Israel from Pittsburgh in 1981 to find the man of her dreams. That quest is still pending. Along the way, however, she found a niche as a tour guide, and also as an animal advocate and rescuer.

Now she is combining her vocation and avocation by offering the first-ever animal-focused tour of Israel: Israel Unleashed (www.israelunleashed.yolasite.com).

The June 3–13 tour will take a maximum of 14 participants to see living examples of positive interactions between humans and animals in the Holy Land. Among the planned stops are:

• the Israel National Therapeutic Riding Association (www.intra.org.il);

• the Israel Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center at Michmoret Naval Academy;

• an animal-assisted therapy program in Tel Aviv that pairs African refugee children with rescued dogs;

• a free veterinary clinic for working horses and donkeys in the northern West Bank;

• the Moshav Gan Yoshia donkey and horse rescue center;

• the Jerusalem Bird Observatory conservation and education center;

• Afrikef monkeys rescue and rehab center;

• bird-watching at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin with ornithologist David Glasner;

• Neot Kedumim, Israel’s biblical landscape reserve.

“People who love animals share a language of animal-related opinions, experiences, and feelings,” Saul says. “This deeply connects them across differences in politics, religions, personalities, and ages, so they can be a happy cohesive group as they experience Israel together.”

Participants will meet a Knesset champion of animal-welfare legislation, and Dr. William Clark of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, whom Saul calls “the king of wildlife conservation.” (Clark spent 30 years engaged in national and international wildlife law-enforcement efforts, including the Interpol Wildlife Crime Group.) At Zichron Ya’akov, the tourists will have dinner at a winery with a spokesperson from Israel’s Let Animals Live organization.

“I spent two weeks perfecting the itinerary for a balance between animal projects that are uplifting; evening activities with animal people; and upbeat Jewish experiences like a fun Shabbaton and walking tour in the Old City — along with the standard sites to make it a real Israel trip, such as Tzfat, the Dead Sea, Masada, Caesarea, and the Golan Heights,” says Saul.

In the course of exploring the “standard sites,” the group is sure to see a standard sight: stray cats. Saul is an expert in this field, as well, as she just recently released the 165th cat she arranged to have spayed or neutered in Jerusalem’s Old City in the past three years. You can easily identify fixed cats in Israel by looking for one clipped ear.

“Tourists should know that’s what a tipped ear means,” says Saul, who financed the first 60 or so cats at her own expense before private donors, Spay Israel, and the city pound stepped in to help.

The tour will not dwell on this aspect, however. “I want to keep it upbeat, and that’s why we’re not going to an animal shelter,” Saul says. “You can go to a shelter in the U.S. and get depressed there.”

Saul says that non-Jews are welcome to join the tour, “providing they understand there will be Jewish elements that will be fun, such as a Sabbath meal with a family, a Jewish wedding, and a talk with an expert on Jewish dating and marriage.” One of the evening sessions will be a discussion with Rabbi Adam Frank about what Judaism has to say about the treatment of animals (quite a lot, actually).

While Saul is in charge of the itinerary and the guiding, Keshet Center for Educational Tourism in Israel has partnered with her to handle the logistics. Tour participants will stay at hotels and kibbutz guest houses during the trip.

Saul is not specifying a minimum or maximum age for the trip. “It’s fine for anyone who is physically fit — not Sylvester Stallone, but enough to do some hiking,” she says. Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Old City ramparts, and Ein Gedi Nature Reserve are among the itinerary items where walking and climbing ability will come in handy, plus there will be rafting on the Jordan River.

As a licensed tour guide living in the Old City, Saul has had occasion to guide a wide range of guests, including the actor Kirk Douglas, who endowed several institutions there. She is probably best known in the cobblestone alleys, however, for her animal rescue work. It all began with a crying kitten she came upon not long after her arrival.

“I stood there wondering if it would survive,” she recalls. “I decided to take it, and I walked through the Old City knocking on doors until I found it a home. Every time I saw an injured cat after that, I had to do something.”

“My parents always let me bring home stray animals,” she says. “I’ve been told that when I was two years old, I ran away from home and was found by passersby at a junkyard, who took me home. My mother asked where I was going, and I said ‘Mike,’ which was the name of the dog of the neighbors up the street.”

For more information on Israel Unleashed, contact Tova Saul at (972) 2 671-3518 or IsraelUnleashed@gmail.com.